Credits: Social Media
The brain creates ‘new chapters’ each day but you can’t force it to hold onto certain memories
Have you ever wondered how the brain is able to categorize each day into different chapters? Also, we only remember certain details from our personal experiences and there’s a reason for that, too.
The human brain is complex and every human thinks differently. A person with a sound mind wouldn’t think similarly to someone with schizophrenia, that’s why the latter “hear voices” that others can’t observe.
Study finds that brain creates ‘new chapters’ daily
We take up numerous activities on a daily basis and certain memories of each thing we do are stronger than the others.
The connection between the chapters our brain creates and external factors influencing it was already well-established. However, researchers at Columbia University were curious to know if the brain could be prompted to remember only certain aspects.
They used a set of 16 different audio narratives that occur in four locations such as a restaurant, an airport, a grocery store, and a lecture hall, and dealt with one of four social situations – a breakup, a proposal, a business deal, and a meet-cute.
After conducting the study, the researchers found that the brain divided a whole experience into individual events depending on what the person is paying attention to, regardless of external stimuli.
“When listening to a story about a marriage proposal at a restaurant, for example, subjects prefrontal cortex would usually be organizing the story into events related to the proposal, leading up (hopefully) to the final ‘yes'”, the study notes.
Brain can be prompted to think a certain way
How often do you wish you could only remember certain experiences? The researchers found that the human brain can be prompted to create new chapters, by altering the information fed.
“They found that the brain divided stories into separate chapters depending on the perspective they were told to be attuned to,” the study states. This means it doesn’t matter what is unfolding around you, as long as you decide what you want to pay attention to.
For example, a person hearing a story about a breakup in an airport could, if prompted to pay attention to details of the airport experience, register new chapters as they went through security and arrived at their gate.
